a) Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to electronic musical instruments, and more particularly to an electronic musical instrument having a performance manipulator capable of generating control variables which change substantially continuously, such as a coordinate variable representing a position on a line or on a plane.
b) Description of the Related Art
Most of electronic musical instruments employ keyboards as main performance manipulators. A keyboard has a plurality of keys so that information of pitch corresponding to each key can be generated when the key is depressed.
Recently, much headway has been made in the development of electronic musical instruments capable of imitatively generating musical tones of a rubbed string instrument, or the like. In a rubbed string instrument, pitch is changed continuously by shifting the position of the finger pressing a string on a fingerboard. Further, the speed of the bow rubbing the string (bow speed) and the pressure of the bow pressing the string (bow pressure) can be changed continuously, so that the musical tone can be changed expressively correspondingly to the amounts of the continuous changes, and the moving direction and turning operation of the bow.
Also in an electronic musical instrument, use of such control variables that can change continuously or other control parameters is effective for changing the musical tone expressively.
Heretofore, performance manipulators such as a keyboard, a guitar controller, a wind controller, etc. have been used as real-time performance manipulators for electronic musical instruments. However, the expression of the musical tone in electronic musical instruments using those performance manipulators is more or less inferior to that in natural musical instruments.
Therefore, there has been made an idea that the speed and pressure equivalent to the bow speed and the bow pressure in a natural rubbed string instrument such as a violin are detected by use of a real-time performance manipulator capable of imitating the image of the rubbed string instrument and are inputted as tone generator control parameters.
The assignee of this application has proposed various manipulators of one dimension (linear manipulators) or two or more dimensions (plane or space manipulators) having a pressure sensor. By actuating the proposed manipulators, it is possible to detect the position and pressure at every sampling time interval to thereby generate information pertaining to the speed and pressure.